BURST is a 36-month European project funded under the Horizon Europe research and innovation program with a European contribution of about 3.2 M€. The project, coordinated by Udo Römer from ISFH gathers 9 partners from 6 countries and started in May 2024. Benkei as a beneficiary, supports the Management, Communication, Dissemination & Exploitation activities of this project.
The aim of the project is to develop the next generation of IBC solar cells with innovative and industrially scalable photonic light management, superior passivation schemes and Ag-free metallization.
The next generation of IBC solar cells: from innovative building blocks to ensuring scale up
To reduce the reliance on imported photovoltaic products, the European Union is promoting large-scale photovoltaic production within Europe as part of the European Green Deal.
Silicon PV technology is advancing towards terawatt-scale production, enabling a transition to cleaner energy systems and a climate-neutral economy. Among various technologies, interdigitated back-contact (IBC) solar cells are expected to achieve the highest power conversion efficiencies (PCE).
However, the cost-effectiveness, sustainability and applicability of this promising technology has still much room for improvement by reducing the use of Ag in metallization and absorber material thickness while maximizing performance. This can be addressed by improving absorption density through optical strategies and advanced passivation schemes. Increasing demand for ultra-thin solar cells has spurred extensive research for its advantages:
- reduced material consumption leading to improved life cycle, weight reduction
- potential mechanical flexibility for expanded application possibilities
The BURST project aims to improve the efficiency of Si IBC solar cells, targeting 26% with thin (<80 µm) and 27% with thick (300 µm) crystalline Si solar cells, without relying on critical materials like indium or silver.
BURST’s objectives
Maximizing the absorption of light in ever thinner wafers requires advanced light management. BURST’s partners are currently working on enhancing light trapping using optimized photonic structures to demonstrate superiority over the state-of-the-art random pyramidal textures.
The developed lab-type fabrication processes will then be transferred to cost-effective, high-throughput industrial fabrication methods (TRL5) by using high precision, rapid laser patterning and atmospheric dry etching.
This work is combined with advanced passivation and passivating contacts to prevent recombination and harvest the extra charge carriers generated from the advanced light management. BURST’s IBC cell is expected to achieve excellent passivation on all surfaces, with the front side passivation layers also needing to be highly transparent and the rear side passivating contacts also needing to have a low contact resistivity.
Tackling sustainability challenges around silver and indium, stated as Critical Raw Materials by the European Commission, BURST will replace Ag with Cu or Al as inexpensive and abundant materials and avoid the use of In, with low-cost techniques to ensure a low-resistive contact (<1 mΩ.cm²) to the passivating poly-Si contact of BURST cells.
Finally, the assembly into mini-modules will demonstrate viability of the technology completed by detailed analysis of the costs, environmental impact, supply security assessment to demonstrate the advantage of BURST technology in relevant environments.
To make this possible, the BURST consortium gathers multidisciplinary expertise from across Europe.
In the BURST project, Benkei supports the coordination team and the consortium on the management activities (WP1) as well as on communication, dissemination and exploitation of results (WP7), represented by Fabienne Brutin and Guadalupe Viñado Buil.
More information on the BURST website: https://burst-project.eu/ and LinkedIn of the project: https://www.linkedin.com/company/burst-project/
Disclaimer: The content of this article reflects only the author’s view and his/her sole responsibility. The European Commission is not responsible for any use that may be made of the information it contains.
Acknowledgments: Europe. The BURST project has received funding from Horizon Europe under Grant Agreement 101146684.
